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Gross display of bigotry from Jess Allen on The Social

I turned on the radio while at work today just in time to hear a repugnant rant from a woman who was cheered on by an audience as she derided Canadian hockey culture as being a nest of bullying white boys.

I had to look it up and listen again as I really couldn’t believe that a Canadian audience would let somebody spout out such a rant of vile pap without booing them off the stage.

It is a gross irony that this comfortable urban living white woman is deriding a Canadian institution which has actually been a binding factor for all races, genders and walks of life in communities across Canada for generations.

I live in Priddis Alberta. While rural, it is a bedroom community of Calgary. We also bound on the Tsuu T’ina native reserve. We have a pretty diverse local population.

We have two things which are community hubs which pull people together. Our community hall (over 100 years old), and our outdoor hockey rink.

Just this year we have had dozens of local volunteers working their asses off to renovate and get our little rink ready for the winter. It has been great to go out at night to see a whole bunch of people working together on a project like that.

They are just finishing the player boxes and should be flooding the rink for the season soon.

The rink will be packed with families for the entire winter.

Most of our community lives on acreages. We don’t often meet and get to know our neighbors. Winters are long and cold and people tend to shut in. The hockey rink brings people out of their homes and brings them together.

I love looking out from my pub (across the road from the rink) to see the kids scrambling around chasing a puck while their families cheer them on. Contrary to what that myopic dolt Jessica Allen implied, these groups are far from simply being white boys. The number of girls on the ice is starting to rival the boys and there are children of a number of races out there playing. This is how kids and parents from different cultures get to know each other. This is how they bond. This is how we do learn that at the very base of things, we are all the same. This somehow offends the senses of Jessica Allen.

Allen says that folks should take their kids on a vacation rather than play hockey? A two week trip rather than an entire season of healthy competitive exercise and bonding within the community?

Kids sit around playing too damn many video games as it is. It is astounding that some vacuous stooge such as Allen could claim that getting out and playing hockey is a bad thing (to the applause of gathered Stepford Wives).

The scene I have described here is repeated in thousands of rinks across Canada. These are social hubs which build and bind communities. If we want to reduce racism and gender issues, we need to be encouraging more community sports like this, not deriding them as that fool Allen did.

Not all communities meet and bond while sipping $12 lattes in downtown Toronto Ms. Allen. You would be well served to get out and learn that. And to the women who gleefully cheered Allen’s bigoted rant, you should be ashamed of yourself.

We need to celebrate traditions which bring people together if we want to see community unity in Canada. Intolerant twits like Jess Allen only drive us apart.

4 thoughts on “Gross display of bigotry from Jess Allen on The Social”

I am so glad someone else thought her rant was horrific. Those of us who have children (who happen to be Caucasian) and play hockey — and love the game of hockey should be offended. Thank you for speaking out!

I watch OHL hockey. There is .a Naive young man and we had 2 dark complex guys as goalies. .i live in the North and there are girls teams as welland the young ones have girls and boys on one team. Also hockey is a good way to stay healthy and get people out of the house on the dark days. You dont get depressed when you ate doing something in the cold winters.